A Coruña

Either during the day or at night, there is always life here. This is a city for strolling and enjoying oneself, with beaches beaches in the city centre and, with the Tower of Hércules overlooking it, a long promenade which goes almost all the way around.

The inhabitants of A Coruña are famous for living well, so follow their example. Sit at a café on the main square known as Plaza de María Pita and discover its fascinating history. Or stroll along the area of the Cantones and admire the famous glass windows, from the Modernist period. And if you would like to go shopping this is the perfect place, especially if you want to dress in style.

Also, A Coruña has excellent museums, such as the Fine Arts museum, the Science Museum, the Domus or the Archaeological museum, located in the San Antón castle. And towards sunset, there is nothing like the cosy and romantic San Carlos gardens or if you prefer entertainment, the Méndez Núñez garden, right in the centre of the city. This is where the Kiosko Alfonso is located, which today is an exhibit centre and was formerly a cinema with two rooms separated by the screen, so you paid a lower fee if you watched the movie from behind the screen..

Points of interest

Dating from the sixteenth century, with reforms from the eighteenth century. Built on a small island in the bay of A Coruña, today connected to the mainland, it was built to house sufferers of contagious illnesses, and then served as a fortress and prison. Today it contains the city's archaeological museum.

Built in the second half of the fifteenth century, it was extended in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Set in a square of singular beauty..

Convent of Santo Domingo

Built in Galician Baroque style from the eighteenth century. Features an interesting tower, built obliquely to the axis of the church. Contains the chapel of Nosa Señora do Rosario, the city's patron saint.

Church of San Nicolás

Church of San Xurxo

An old Collegiate church built by the seafarer's guild in Romanesque style in the twelfth century, completed in the fifteenth century. Particularly interesting features include its rose window and the tympanum over the main door, with a scene of the Adoration of the Magi.

Church of Santiago

Romanesque, built in the twelfth century with reforms in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Includes an interesting main door and a collection of modillions with grotesque figures.

Town Hall

A large, elegant Modernist building dating from the early twentieth century. Highly detailed façade, finished off with three domed towers.

Gateways to the Sea

Open in different points of the old fifteenth-century city walls. The Gateway of San Miguel dates from the sixteenth century, and the gateway of O Cravo and A Cruz are both from the eighteenth century.

Built in the second century AD during the reign of the Emperor Trajan. It is the oldest working Roman lighthouse in the world. Its exterior was renovated in the eighteenth century, and it is the symbol of the city.

Essential

The sun gradually sinks into the Atlantic in a dreamlike landscape, in front of the world's only Roman lighthouse still in operation, set in a park with sculptures representing the legendary origins of the tower and the city: Átrabros by Arturo Andrade; Breogán by Xosé Cid; Caronte by Ramón Conde; Hercules and Geryon by Tim Behrens and José Espora; and the 'Menhir Forest' by Manolo Paz.

The Tower itself was built in the early second century AD by the architect from Coimbra, Caius Sevius Lupus. It now shows the façade that was added in 1791 during the reform carried out by the engineers E. Giannini (author of the plans) and J. Elejalde.